


girl code

by clytemnestras



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Gen, Underage Drinking, Unrequited Love, implied/referenced eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 06:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15552150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: Sometimes, Blair uses the strands of Serena’s hair like plucked daisy petals,she loves me, she loves me not.





	girl code

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionheartedgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedgirl/gifts).



> for the prompt at the [ficathon](https://clockwork-hart1.livejournal.com/33943.html):
> 
> and while you do not kiss away my tears you let them seep into your shirt and to me, that is just as good

Sometimes, Blair uses the strands of Serena’s hair like plucked daisy petals, _she loves me, she loves me not._

Serena will stretch out all feline limbs and delicateness, and lay her head on Blair's lap like they are children again, learning to braid or treating the cuts and scrapes they accumulated dragging their knees along hotel lobby carpets.

 

Blair digs her fingers into Serena’s blonde hair as they watch old movies, trading between Hepburn and Monroe until they meet at a crescendoing middle ground with Grace Kelly, and Serena spills out all of her feelings into Blair's lap. It's routine, every three months, cycle as regular as the moon.

 

 _She loves me_ , Blair says silently to the half-braid in her fingers. Serena sobs again, a boy’s name, a mournful howl. _She loves me not._

 

*

 

In their secret girlhood language of cattiness and devoted undertones, Blair passes a note to Serena through the ever reliable Constance grapevine.

 

_We need to talk about Nate._

 

Serena bites her lip when she reads sometimes. When she listens, too.

 

Her message comes back, seemingly without a quirk of her rose-glossed mouth.

 

_We need to talk about Chuck._

 

Later, in physics, which is the only science Blair can ever get a handle on entirely without just absorbing textbooks verbatim (and yes, she understands there's an irony to that, too), she checks Gossip Girl under the desk like the eternal fairy compulsion that it is. The headline is, _We Need To Talk About Jenny_. The little blonde thing is adorned up in last seasons rejects trussed up by a Singer into something almost fashionable, but not quite. In the picture she is not smiling.

 

She got that from Blair. Blair stole it from the monarchy - no king ever smiles in his portraits. To be regal is to be serious. Is to proclaim one is _not to be fucked with._

 

She forwards it to Serena and says, “We were wrong. We should be talking about girls.”

 

Serena laughs three classrooms (sans AP) away. Blair can't hear it, but she feels the deep vibration through the earth.

 

*

 

They go out together, a mirage of before-ness, wearing the same dresses they used to like that's appropriate or wise. (Blair checks her seam three time for bulges before she even climbs into the limo. She winces at every creaking _ping_ of thread. She reminds herself vodka has no calories and wipes a tear away and into her hair.)

 

Serena stuns in red, a poison rose to match her petal of a mouth.

 

Blair wears red, too, but that seems less important.

 

“We clash,” she tells Serena.

 

“We match,” Serena replies, leaning down from her ivory tower of a spine to squeeze Blair's hand imperceptibly. A bloom of warmth, skin on skin, and she is gone again. Even with her nails freshly manicured into points, Blair has not learned how to hold on.

 

You can get in anywhere in Manhattan with a platinum card and a smile as charming as your youthful breasts, and they settle at the bar with a homely comfort. Her inner Hepburn winces at the thought that the _bar_ is her comfort; give her a booth, a little cocktail table with only enough room to play footsie beneath, she yearns for anything less exposing than this.

 

As it is, a handsome creature in Armani catches her on the arm as she stirs the olive in her martini glass. She has barely noticed Serena go quiet.

 

“Can I whisk the lady away to somewhere more comfortable, like my booth over there?” His hands are oh so slightly rough, and there is an appealing juxtaposition to the touch and the edge of sliminess to his voice. She shudders at the thought she might be developing a _type._

 

“I'm afraid I've got to stay with my friend,” she says, smiling coyly, bringing the skewered olive to her mouth and resting it softly on the centre of her lower lip.

 

“You mean the lady in red?” He nods to the other side of the room, Serena's long arms draped over the shoulders of a dark haired man, mouth open in laughter.

 

Why is she surprised? Serena's latest filthy habit is being miles away.

 

Blair bites down on the olive and blinks up at her suitor through her eyelashes. “You can buy me a drink,” she tells him. “It'll give me time to think about joining you.”

 

He smiles, and obliges. She doesn't smile back.

 

“My name is Maurice,” He says, outstretching a glass instead of a hand.

 

“Blair,” she says, raising the martini in a mock salute.

 

“Blair,” he repeats, rolling her name around his mouth. “It suits you.” He nods to her dress. “Like the color.”

 

She brings the martini to her lips and watches him over the rim. _Liar._

 

*

 

Serena shows up at her house at seven with Starbucks, two glazed donuts and half a pink grapefruit from God only knows where, and Blair accepts it, not as an apology but as a sign of good faith.

 

“His name is Jeremy,” Serena tells her taking a perfectly circular bite out of one of the donuts. She is underneath Blair's covers, pulled in tight to her body because nothing has changed in the gulf between thirteen and now. These are sleepover rules. These mornings belong to Blair and the shared history of them.

 

Blair sinks a dessert spoon into the grapefruit and does not grimace at the bitterness. She has long grown accustomed to that taste.

 

“He's studying finance. His grandfather is an old guard in investment banking, I think he works for Bart Bass sometimes. I don't know how we haven't met him sooner.” She drops all of this as easily as the glaze from her donut drops back into the paper bag, a line of liquid sugar dripping down her pinkie finger.

 

“You always seem to find the most eligible bachelors in the city. Watch out or the well will dry up before you hit college.” Blair laughs, and Serena flinches at the harshness of the sound.

 

Blair doesn't know why. She's never made a secret of her nastiness. She's made of volatile materials. Not even Serena can touch her and come away unscathed.

 

“Do you want me to leave, Blair? Because I will.” She packs up her svelte frame, her sugar sweating carbs, her strifeless perfection and slips out from under the bedclothes.

 

“If you want to go then go. I'm not going to sit here and be kind and fucking absorbant when this one breaks your heart, S. Let's say I love you too much to watch the rerun.” Blair brings the silver spoon to her mouth again and wants to hurl the pointless imagery of it all out of her fourth story window. This is not a well thought out Fitzgerald novel.

 

There are too many women, for a start.

 

Serena leaves, and the door stays open in her departure. She would pretend to be too adult to slam it in indignation, but it's just a lack of dramatics. Serena should know better than most that age means nothing when it comes to fits of passion, not in this city.

 

*

 

He only takes two months to break Serena's heart, but really, who’s counting?

 

(Blair is, counting the strands of Serena's hair again. He loves her, He loves her _not._ )

 

*

 

“We're going out,” Blair tells Serena, sweeping the hair off of her face and pulling it into a low chignon.

 

“No, we're not.” Serena dabs at her eyes again, leaving a smudge of mascara for Blair to buff away. It is the third day of mourning. Blair is so terribly tired of _men_.

 

“Yes,” she says, wetting a kleenex with the bottle of evian beside the bed and sweeping it beneath Serena's dewy eyes. “We are. I've already texted Maurice, and Blair Waldorf does not break plans.”

 

“Maurice?” Serena lets herself be handled, be preened, like one of those expensive china dolls beneath Blair's measured touch.

 

“He's a friend. He's gotten us a table for lunch at Chateau Marmont.” She sweeps red along the curve of Serena's lower lip, focuses her attention on how it gives under her finger, the imperceptible quivers that threaten to bleed the color. “Blot,” she tells her, handing over another kleenex.

 

Serena was never one to do as she was told, but there was a difference when it was Blair's instruction. Blair thinks it's because she's the most likely to hold Serena's best interests at heart. It could just as easily be resentment in the usual age gaps, but Blair would rather wear her own deduction like a selected brooch, pinned to her sleeve, beside her heart.

 

They dress, Serena in white and Blair in black, though the colors seem like something of an inversion. Maurice touches Blair on the arm, on the wrist, spreads himself over her shoulders like a stole as they speak, Serena laughing brightly beside and stirring up subtle attention from the edges of the room.

 

Blair touches her arm, her wrist, laces their fingers on the gold-embroidered table cloth whilst each free hand raises a martini to a perfect mouth.

 

Maurice spots an old friend, makes a threatened promise to bring him over, and Blair knows the way these things go. She pulls her arm around Serena's waist, tips their heads together in arcane secrecy and says, “I love you.”

 

Serena laughs and repeats the words, and Blair wonders if they could possibly mean the same.

 

Maurice’s friend arrives, blond and sharp jawed and Blair drinks deeply of her cocktail. Regular like the moon.

 

Serena slips her hand away and places it lightly on the knee of her newest vice and Blair does the same, pinching Maurice hard on the thigh and draining her glass.

 

*

 

Serena leaves with her arm looped into Blair's, a phone number folded into a napkin tucked into her bag. Blair is drunk, Blair is teetering in her heels as they make their way to a town car and she giggles into Serena's hair. “See,” she says. “Boys come and go, but _I_ get to take you home.”

 

Serena indulges her, tips her head onto Blair's shoulder so they can share body heat, so that she might catch some of Blair's irreverence like a contact high. The proximity of that golden skin is intoxicating, and Blair can't help but turn her head, press her mouth against Serena's cheek.

 

When she pulls away there's a red smear, like an errant blush staining the apple of Serena's cheek. _There,_ Blair thinks, _I've marked you like an animal. You're mine now._

 

Serena makes sure she downs a whole glass of water before curling into bed and Blair can barely stomach the memory of all these nights in reverse.

 

Serena wraps her arm around Blair's waist in the bed, pulled in too tight for Blair's good sense and whispers, “I've got you, B.”

 

_I've got you, B._

 

Blair is asleep before she entirely parses the thought.

  
  



End file.
